If you’ve ever taken MUSC 145 (Intro to Jazz) at UNC with Professor Stephen Anderson, this workshop is the one for you. If you haven’t, you should still come to the workshop and should also take MUSC 145.
Coming to the workshop on the journalism/jazz history route has had me test my knowledge on what I learned in the Intro to Jazz class and given me a new appreciation for journalism. It has been enjoyable to say the least to do things such as play piano and interview new people.
Some of my personal takeaways on what to expect are as follows:
1. You should expect difficulty with piano lessons if you have long acrylic nails.
If piano lessons is still on the schedule for the journalism/jazz history portion of the program, I recommend not getting lengthy acrylic nails. It flew over my head that piano lessons actually meant practicing piano, trying to lay my fingers nicely on the piano was tough. After searching on Google I came across an article that validates my advice, Joshua Ross talks about how playing piano with long nails is not recommended. Nonetheless the piano lessons were one of my favorite things to do at the workshop. Dan Davis, an amazing drummer who teaches the jazz history portion also does the piano lessons and is enthusiastic, encouraging and had a lot of patience when it came to teaching me to play with long nails. Whether or not you take my advice, I encourage you to just have fun.
2. You can expect to partially become a twitter-tweeting expert.
Andy Bechtel is one of UNC’s journalism professors, he teaches the journalism class for the workshop. One of the assignments required the class to live-tweet one of the workshop concerts. As someone who didn’t use Twitter prior to this class I was nervous. Luckily enough, Professor Bechtel walked us through what our tweets should look like, and I would say it was a success. Live-tweeting allowed me to express what I saw and heard while watching the Kate McGarry/Baron Tymas Quartet perform, and I was interested to see what my classmates had to say. If you’re interested in viewing some of these tweets, search #UNCjazz on Twitter.
3. You can have the best of both worlds: jazz and journalism.
The workshop has amazing musicians and professors who run the program. As previously mentioned, Dan Davis taught us about jazz history and Andy Bechtel taught us about journalism. Both of these individuals are knowledgeable in what they teach and are excited to do it, and that simply makes learning so much fun. Even if you aren’t majoring in either of these, it’s a great opportunity to learn and get acquainted with them. You never know if you’ll pickup a new hobby whether it’s learning a new instrument, studying the cool jazz era or live-tweeting an event you attend.
4. You could meet the next big star.
I chose to attend the vocal lessons for the first couple days of the workshop. The lessons were for the singers who were to perform on the last day of the workshop. I was able to watch them warm up and got a sneak peak of what they would sing at the concert. I also chose to interview one of the singers, Ruthie Collet, and learned about her background with singing jazz music. The lessons are taught by amazing musicians, so you could even be meeting someone who has already taken the music industry by storm. What I’m trying to say is that you never know if you’re meeting someone who could go on and become a well-known singer, or maybe even meet the next big trumpeter.